


Just Watching

by 401



Series: Fixing Winter [13]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Body Image, Kissing, M/M, Post CATWS, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-27 07:26:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5039212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/401/pseuds/401
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Its taken a while for Steve and Bucky to connect again after the fight on the bridge. Its starting to get better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Watching

“Why’re you pouting, Buck?” Steve sighed, not removing his eyes from the pair of black combat pants laid over his lap.

Bucky didn’t answer, but continued to watch as the Captain’s hands moved with accurate yet effortless movements, sewing up the little holes that always managed to find their way into Bucky’s combats. He had tried to do it himself, but his tense, metal fingers had bent the needle and frustration and embarrassment had forced him to give the task over to more practised hands.

“Bucky?” Steve persisted, looking up now.

Bucky dropped his eyes and chewed on a patch of callous at the edge of his thumbnail. He could feel the relentless pressure of Steve’s watch from across the warmly lit living room and the anxiety that was becoming a too-frequent visitor in his everyday life rose in his throat like a hot noose. Tasting blood on his gnawed thumb, he stopped and forced himself to look up.

Blue eyes met his.

“S’nothing,” He mumbled, “Just watching.”

Steve smiled knowingly, trying to stop it becoming a full grin.

“You’re allowed,” Steve shrugged, “You look like I just caught you jacking…”  


“No,” Bucky interrupted, catching his tone and softening it quickly, “No, I don’t.”

He ducked his head again, blushing deeply as he stared at the carpet.

“Do you remember it, Bucky?” Steve asked, putting down the sewing on the lampstand next to him, “What we did before the war?”

Bucky nodded. It was one of the rawest most nagging memories he had.

He could remember the nights when they would give up the façade and fall apart, kisses would become messy and toothy, leaving red marks across chests and shoulders. Voices would go from hushed to plain desperate and slacks would get tighter.

He would press his mouth so hard against Steve’s, sometimes to stop the little bastard getting them arrested with those gorgeous sounds he made, but mainly because he needed it so bad that ‘hard’ was the only way to go about it.

Bucky, even more that Steve spent his days acting as straight as he possibly could. He would pretend to humour the jokes about Steve being a ‘fairy’ and a ‘queer’ with his fists balled in his pockets and his teeth clenched. Those nights were his apologies.

“I miss it,” Bucky whispered, immediately regretting his forwardness.

Steve faltered.

He had long given up hope of this element of their relationship returning. Bucky’s return had been a cold one. No animosity, but a withdrawal and caution that made him hard to access without upsetting or scaring. The subject of sexuality had been a seldom explored one, but one that was present and pressing. Steve would try and make it easy for Bucky, positioning himself in a way that was not invasive but left contact open. It worked sometimes, and Steve would stay dead still when Bucky would let his head lull against his shoulder or absently hold his hands.

“You miss it?” Steve repeated.

Bucky nodded. If he could have ducked his head further, he would have, but his chin was pressed against his chin so he furrowed his eyebrows instead to shadow his eyes.

“I think about it all the time,” He mumbled pulling at a rogue thread on his sweatpants, “It’s…scary.”

Steve frowned and crossed the room. He sat on the couch next to Bucky and swung his legs up, tucking them underneath himself.

“Now am I really that scary?” Steve teased, tilting Bucky’s chin up to meet his eyes, “S’not like James Barnes to go all coy on me.”

Bucky smiled weakly, touching Steve’s hand lightly with his metal one before withdrawing sharply and pressing his titanium fingers into a tight fist against his bare chest.

“I’m not scared of that hand, Bucky,” Steve sighed, pulling it towards him and holding it so the palm was pressed against his cheek.  


Steve watched as the anxiety rippled across Bucky’s face. His mechanical fingers twitched against the unfamiliar softness of Steve’s cheek, unsure of their motives with anything other than rifles and combat weapons. The heat and fragility of bones under skin and muscle scared him. He knew how breakable people were; he had done a fair amount of breaking. But he stayed, cupping Steve’s cheek in his palm as the fast, dull memories of freezing Brooklyn nights and draughty floorboards coursed behind his eyes, locked on Steve’s in a way that would usually make him bristle with discomfort.

Steve’s mouth flickered with a smile, his lips smudging against Bucky’s thumb. Bucky lifted his flesh hand and placed it on the other side of the Captain’s face, looking at the contrast between his two sets of fingers, one set scraped, calloused and pink with life. The other set were efficient, dexterous but dull and inanimate, their glossy titanium skin reflecting Bucky’s face and distorting his features over curves of metal. He closed his eyes to shut of the jarring image.

Steve’s breath caught in his throat. He leant forward slowly but paused. There was no point in trying to surprise Bucky. He was near-impossible to surprise, and if you did what happened next would be uncomfortable for both of them. He leant forward properly, pressing his lips against Bucky’s. He smiled against the soft heat, pleased with the fact that Bucky hadn’t flinched yet.

The soldier’s mouth felt out-of-practice under his own and his lips moved with poor timing. Steve loved it. He pulled Bucky closer, letting his hands rest on his hips, sliding his fingertips just under the waistband of his sweatpants. Bucky tightened at the touch and shifted forward pressing his mouth against Steve’s harder.

Heat crept across his skin in a way he had no longer thought possible. The cold that seemed to cling to the walls of every artery in his body was lifting. The frost in his muscles was thawing and Brooklyn seemed a little closer.

The winter was coming to an end.

 

 


End file.
